You are here

Implementing change

Communicating change

To get the collaboration off to a good start effective communication is essential. Always be open and honest: do not hide the negatives. Use workshops and meetings to inform and involve people in the change implementation. Select methods of communication appropriate to the audience. Combine written messages with verbal explanations. Encourage ideas and problem solving approaches. Restate goals and benefits. Manage expectations and be realistic in the messages delivered.

Assigning responsibilities

Change requires both leadership and committed and dedicated followers. Identify people able to help you drive the change implementation. Change agents must be: good communicators; willing to collaborate; looking for ways to improvement things; realistic; ideas people; thoughtful listeners. Analyse the changes you want to achieve; decide who should lead this action; draws up a list of the tasks required; discuss the plans with each person; get feedback and check commitment. Encourage relationship building and monitor organisational wellbeing.

Developing commitment

Stakeholder support is essential for collaboration. “Walk the walk” and lead by example: demonstrate your own commitment to the change. Remind stakeholders that changes will have a beneficial impact for everyone. Use staff and team meetings to highlight successes. Work with a system of advice and consent as much as practical. The talking and listening has to reach right to the bottom of the organisation.

Changing culture

The culture of a collaboration is shaped by the culture of its partner organisations and their staff.

Goal setting

Support people to take a continuous improvement approach to their responsibilities and set realistic, achievable goals. Reaching goals will reinforce the continuous improvement attitude.

Acclamation

Give verbal praise in public. Written acknowledgement of commitment and effort as well as success, helps keep people engaged and enthusiastic.

Pleasure

Make work as enjoyable as possible and celebrate success.

Responsibilities

Build leadership and facilitation capacity and encourage people to take a strategic perspective and develop their skills.

Incentives

In the Not For Profit Sector increasing wages is frequently not an option but look for other ways to reward people who make a major effort to proactively adapt to change.

Ownership

Develop a sense of pride in the collaboration. Display the logo on partner premises. Build a strong sense of awareness of the benefits of the collaboration.

Procedures/protocols

Ensure that the collaboration’s procedures/protocols and mission, vision and values statements enshrine respectful collaborative approaches in all documentation and activities.

Change the way you do things to demonstrate the shifts in organisational culture.

Managing resistance

Whilst planning can help circumvent some resistance, you will still need to watch for and address this issue if it arises. There may be both passive and active resistance that must be taken seriously and addressed. Treat people carefully when their spirits and self esteem are low. Resistance is best dealt with by understanding, without buying into emotional argument. People need to be allowed to voice concerns, as these concerns may be valid. Warm and fuzzy encouragement will not offset genuine personal fears. Support people to look for solutions for their concerns. Remind everyone that change always means opportunity. Ensure that people believe their own role is significant to the collaboration.

Rational: lack of belief in the collaboration’s capacity for effectiveness, misconstruing the intent or the detail of the collaboration, belief that change is unnecessary and/or an expectation of negative consequences arising from the collaboration.

Explain more clearly the purpose behind the collaboration.

Clarify the details of the plan.

Discuss what would happen if the collaboration did not occur.

Involve everyone in the continuous improvement culture to support managing the change successfully.

Work with everyone to ensure effective reorganization of or the development of new, systems and processes to support the collaboration.

Personal: worried about the future, afraid of losing their job, concerned about interference in job role from people who don’t understand the ‘real’ situation.

Note that it is most likely service agreements will be renewed where service delivery demonstrates continuous improvement, and that government is encouraging collaborative approaches.

Focus on areas that people will find positive and exciting – greater opportunity for peer support, increased opportunity to learn from others.

Provide ample opportunity for people to have input into or at least review, policy, procedure, protocols and schedules of delegation being developed.

Emotional: apathy, shock distrust and or passive or active resistance.

Restate the reasons for and benefits of the collaboration.

Constantly communication about the collaboration and change process being undertaken. Be honest in all communication and answer all questions.

Demonstrate by examples how the new way is expected to provide better outcomes.

Show by commitment and example that the collaborative approach is here to stay, and is not just a passing fancy.

Brisbane City Council supports community, social enterprise and not-for-profit organisations by providing access to free professional advice to assist with their growth and sustainability. It established the Inclusive Brisbane Professional Advice Alliance in 2013 to provide pro bono high-level...

MDA (Multicultural Development Australia) and DiverseWerks are delivering an NDIS Sector Development - Provider Readiness (CALD) project funded by the Department of Social Services and supported by the Queensland Government. The project aims to increase sectoral understanding of people with...

Community Legal Centres Queensland, in partnership with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, are surveying lawyers, frontline and intake workers, and social workers in Queensland about the impact phone or internet issues are having on their clients. The results will help shape the...

Today (6 February) is Safer Internet Day (SID) - raising awareness of staying safe online. Celebrated in 130 countries, SID is a great opportunity to engage the community in understanding how to make the online world safe for all users. In 2018, the SID theme ‘Create, connect and share respect: A...

The National Disability Services (NDS) released their flagship report the State of Disability Sector Report 2017 in early December. Alongside the report they have developed a helpful factsheet with key statistics from the report. The report is based on responses from more than 500 disability...

The Queensland Government and the community services industry have co-developed the Partnering for the future: advancing Queensland's services industry 2017-25 strategy as a roadmap for proactively addressing changes and driving collaboration towards the industry's 2025 vision. To help your...

Elections are exciting and offer opportunities for real positive change, but how do you position your organisation to take advantage of these opportunities and avoid the risks? This webinar will discuss campaign and communications case studies from Australia and the UK and help you identify the...

Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular method of online fundraising for individuals, businesses, not-for-profits and charities. Generally it involves an individual or an organisation setting a fundraising target online and then asking the crowd of the internet for donations to reach that target...

Media Statement Minister for Communities, Women and Youth, Minister for Child Safety and Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence The Honourable Shannon Fentiman Financial assistance is now available for south-east Queensland’s not-for-profit organisations that have been affected...

We have launched a brand new course on the Community Door eTraining website which provides an introduction to the social service sector in Queensland for managers and organisations new to the sector. It is free for anyone to access. It features a profile of the sector in Queensland, insights into...

Pages

Are you looking for support in Queensland, or trying to find a service that meets your needs? Now you can search oneplace , the service directory hosted by the Queensland Family and Child Commission. oneplace is an easily accessible directory of community services to help Queensland families to get...

The collaboration decision support tool is designed as a resource to aid organisations considering entering into or forming collaborations to: (a) help to determine if collaboration is the most appropriate model (b) assess current capacity and capability to undertake collaborative action, and (c)...

Information technology and online solutions can help your community organisation work better. ACOSS, Infoxchange and the Department of Communications have teamed up to bring you Digital Business Kits which give you the tools and information to do more online. Digital Business Kits are hosted on...

In March 2014, QCOSS produced the Rethinking Resources: Case Studies of Financial Resilience from Community Services report, in which community organisations from Queensland share how they are working to increase their financial sustainability. The strategies they employ include social enterprise,...

This is a very simple and easy to use toolkit that is filled with templates and guides to support your organisation to develop innovative and collaborative ways of working together. From developing a value statement, stakeholder engagement, business planning, SWOT analysis and many more. The...

This guide looks at client-focused service integration . Options and resources are provided that can assist organisations even without structural change to or between the service providers (government and non-government) involved. Other resources such as the Planned Support Guide provide a case...

This document outlines the the issues and factors you need to think about when working in partnership or merging with other organisations.
Download the Collaborative working and mergers document here .

This Research to Practice Note aims to improve understanding of effective interagency collaboration in a shared approach to child protection context and provides a brief overview of the relevant literature in this area.
You can access the document here .

The Womens Centre Cairns is a proudly feminist not-for-profit organisation that provides services to women and children at risk of domestic violence and homelessness. Drawing funding from the Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services and Department of Housing and Public...

You may have seen the Network Spaces tab at the top of the Community Door site. You may even think Network Spaces is actually Community Door, a common assumption since the whole of Community Door used to be that green colour.

The competitive tender process for the Queensland government's new Social Benefit Bonds program has recently been launched, and the Invitation for Expressions of Interest (EOI) documents are available via...

At a time of significant disruption in the community services sector, many organisations are rightly focused on defining their inventory and consolidating their market position. The idea of collaboration or partnership in an increasingly competitive market seems nonsensical to many agencies....

With the impending roll-out of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) looming large in Queensland, some Not-For-Profit service providers in the Townsville region are expressing a feeling of isolation and of being somewhat disconnected.

Lutheran Community Care’s vision is aligned to making quality of life better for the clients we serve. In the light of this it is important to us that we can also quantify what has changed for the client since they have been using our services. Through adopting an outcome-based framework we seek...

Homelessness is a problem too complex to be tackled by only the community services sector and government departments. It needs the combined efforts of the private, public and community sectors because a diverse range of people and organisations are better able to address the diverse and...